Sam Giancana

Early in the evening of July 12, 1961, many months after the beginning of the Kennedy connection with Marilyn Monroe, Mafia boss Sam Giancana walked into a waiting room at Chicago`s O`Hare Airport, on a routine stopover en route to New York. He was accompanied by Phyllis McGuire, the tallest and loviest of the three McGuire Sisters, then one of the most popular female singing groups in the United States. Waiting for the couple as they arrived at O`Hare was a team of FBI agents, acting on the orders of Robert Kennedy`s Justice Department.

Michael Corbitt, 60, a former suburban Chicago police chief who wrote a book about his ties to organized crime, died July 27 in Tampa of lung cancer. In 1989, Mr. Corbitt, a former police chief of Willow Springs, Ill., was convicted of conspiracy in the death of Dianne Masters, the wife of a mob attorney. He was released from prison in 1998, two years early, after helping the FBI solve mob crimes. In 2003 Mr. Corbitt published his story, Double Deal: The Inside Story of Murder, Unbridled Corruption and the Cop Who Was a Mobster.

Michael Corbitt, 60, a former suburban Chicago police chief who wrote a book about his ties to organized crime, died July 27 in Tampa of lung cancer. In 1989, Mr. Corbitt, a former police chief of Willow Springs, Ill., was convicted of conspiracy in the death of Dianne Masters, the wife of a mob attorney. He was released from prison in 1998, two years early, after helping the FBI solve mob crimes. In 2003 Mr. Corbitt published his story, Double Deal: The Inside Story of Murder, Unbridled Corruption and the Cop Who Was a Mobster.

She was branded "Mob whore" and "Mob moll," but in Showtime's TV movie, Power and Beauty, Judith Campbell Exner comes across chiefly as a woman so smitten that she lets her heart rule her head. The object of her affection? John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And their 2 1/2 affair - starting when the then-senator was mounting his presidential campaign - would link Exner, via Mob boss Sam Giancana, with the Kennedy-Mafia alliance. Exner died in 1999, of cancer, at 65 - but not before she sold the rights to her life story to Showtime cable television.

She was branded "Mob whore" and "Mob moll," but in Showtime's TV movie, Power and Beauty, Judith Campbell Exner comes across chiefly as a woman so smitten that she lets her heart rule her head. The object of her affection? John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And their 2 1/2 affair - starting when the then-senator was mounting his presidential campaign - would link Exner, via Mob boss Sam Giancana, with the Kennedy-Mafia alliance. Exner died in 1999, of cancer, at 65 - but not before she sold the rights to her life story to Showtime cable television.

Judith Campbell Exner, 65, a suburban California woman who made headlines in the mid-1970s when her name was linked to President John F. Kennedy as well as the nation's reputedly most powerful organized crime boss, died Friday in Duarte, Calif. Ms. Exner, who lived in Newport Beach, Calif., died at a hospital of breast cancer. In 1975, her name and accounts of her romantic involvements began leaking from Senate investigations of alleged CIA assassination attempts of foreign leaders. Her name came to light after it was alleged that Kennedy had tried to use Mafia figures toget rid of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro.

According to historians, people turned to biographies in Victorian times to upgrade themselves by studying heroic noble lives. Now, they read such books to be startled, learning from biographer Kitty Kelley, for example, that Frank Sinatra started singing My Kind of Town not because he really liked Chicago, but because he loved the late Sam Giancana. The song, the late Peter Lawford says in Kelley`s just-published book, "was his tribute to Sam, an awful guy with a gargoyle face and weasel nose."

Nicholas J. D`Ambrosio was found guilty on Wednesday of the 1982 murder of the son of a reputed Chicago mobster in North Lauderdale. A Broward Circuit Court jury deliberated about eight hours Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning before convicting D`Ambrosio of the second-degree murder of Mark Tortoriello. Judge Leroy H. Moe scheduled sentencing for May 28. Under state sentencing guidelines, he could receive 12 to 17 years in prison. Tortoriello was shot and killed on Dec. 30, 1982, in front of a house in the 8200 block of Southwest Fifth Court, a block from his home.

Judith Exner, who has led a life of poor choices and worse luck, finally has a decent fellow at her side, reveals the April Vanity Fair. It`s the son she never knew. Exner, 56, is a drab footnote to the high-handed legacy of John F. Kennedy. You remember: the stunning woman who had affairs with Frank Sinatra, mobster Sam Giancana and Kennedy, serving as go-between for the president and Giancana, presumably on the topic of killing Fidel Castro. Exner in 1960 She has been humbled by public rebuke and, now, illness.

Re the writers of the Dec. 23 letters, "Votes manipulated," and "Patriot Act action": I would like to remind both of some facts. I hope they are old enough to remember when all the big cities in the United States were controlled by Democratic machines, who rounded up drunks, vagrants, homeless and paid them to vote. Joe Kennedy Sr. allied himself for his son, JFK, with Sam Giancana (mob boss of Chicago), who purportedly said, "Buy as many votes as you have to, but not one too many." Mayor Daley of Chicago in those times had the motto, "Vote early and vote often."

Judith Campbell Exner, 65, a suburban California woman who made headlines in the mid-1970s when her name was linked to President John F. Kennedy as well as the nation's reputedly most powerful organized crime boss, died Friday in Duarte, Calif. Ms. Exner, who lived in Newport Beach, Calif., died at a hospital of breast cancer. In 1975, her name and accounts of her romantic involvements began leaking from Senate investigations of alleged CIA assassination attempts of foreign leaders. Her name came to light after it was alleged that Kennedy had tried to use Mafia figures toget rid of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro.

According to historians, people turned to biographies in Victorian times to upgrade themselves by studying heroic noble lives. Now, they read such books to be startled, learning from biographer Kitty Kelley, for example, that Frank Sinatra started singing My Kind of Town not because he really liked Chicago, but because he loved the late Sam Giancana. The song, the late Peter Lawford says in Kelley`s just-published book, "was his tribute to Sam, an awful guy with a gargoyle face and weasel nose."

Early in the evening of July 12, 1961, many months after the beginning of the Kennedy connection with Marilyn Monroe, Mafia boss Sam Giancana walked into a waiting room at Chicago`s O`Hare Airport, on a routine stopover en route to New York. He was accompanied by Phyllis McGuire, the tallest and loviest of the three McGuire Sisters, then one of the most popular female singing groups in the United States. Waiting for the couple as they arrived at O`Hare was a team of FBI agents, acting on the orders of Robert Kennedy`s Justice Department.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, while denying complicity by his nation in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, suspected the 1963 murder resulted from a conspiracy of perhaps three people, previously secret FBI documents say. Castro also was quoted as saying that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald became angry and threatened to kill Kennedy when he was denied a visa by the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City earlier in 1963. Many of more than 10,000 new FBI reports and memos, which the National Archives made public on Thursday, added some footnotes to history by recounting the reactions to Kennedy's assassination in Cuba and in the former Soviet Union.

He was a superstar of mighty magnitude, a combination of Don Johnson and Tom Selleck, the dreamboat of the 1950s. His black hair, flashing blue eyes and athletic build made him a leading man extraordinaire. The media covered his romances and private life as if he were a prince, a role he sometimes played in potboiler movies. While he never won an Academy Award for any of his performances in more than 100 films and critics often panned his acting, he finally gained distinction as a respected actor.